Director Jim Wynorski made Roger Corman a bet: he could remake the 1957 film with the same budget and schedule thirty years later.
Luckily, he had a not-so-secret weapon. Let’s be honest: Traci Lords being in a Merchant-Ivory movie about malaria would make me watch that movie ten times in a row. Wyrnorski is a smart guy. After all, he told John McCarty in The Sleaze Merchants: Adventures in Exploitation Filmmaking from the ’50s to the ’90s, “While we were at an optical house doing some effects work for Big Bad Mama II, I came across an original print of the old Corman film. Kelli Maroney was there, and Raven, and we had a big hoot watching it. So I said “I think we could have a blast remaking this picture.” And they said “Well, who are you going to get to play the Beverly Garland part?” There were some newspapers lying around, and I saw a story in one of them about Traci Lords. So I said, “Let’s get Traci Lords!” She even looks a little bit like Beverly Garland.”
Lords, however, didn’t want to be found in the wake of the scandalous idea that she made adult films underage. But he convinced her to be in it and was surprised that she improved as an actress as the filming went on.
Traci plays Nadine Story, a nurse who soon gets hired to be the personal blood transfusion person for Mr. Johnson, who is really an alien from the planet Davanna. So yeah, it’s a vampire movie — and fits into the “Not-So-Classic Monsters” theme this week — while also being an alien movie.
To get the movie under budget, some scenes are directly lifted from other Corman movies, like a stalker from Hollywood Boulevardand a foggy scene of a woman being followed from Humanoids from the Deep.
This being a Wynorski movie, he filled it with plenty of gorgeous women. So look out for Rebecca Perle (Savage Streets), Becky LeBeau (Bubbles in the hot tub from Back to School; her voice is dubbed by Michelle Bauer), Roxanne Kernohan (Critters 2), Monique Gabrielle (61 magical films to choose from and I’ll pick Young Lady Chatterley II), Ava Cadell (Ava from the world of Andy Sidaris), Cynthia Thompson (Body Count), Kelli Maroney (Night of the Comet) and Kim Sill (AKA Kimberly Dawn, AKA Kim Dawson, star of a ton of movies you snuck watch on Cinemax in your puberty).
Vittorio Rambaldi wrote the script and did the special effects on Nightmare Beach and if you recognize his last name, then you already realize that he’s the son of Italian effects legend Carlo Rambaldi. This was the first movie he directed and he got Umberto Lenzi to write it, which is a great plan, along with James Justice, who used the name Harry Kirkpatrick to write and direct Nightmare Beach but I kind of think he’s also Lenzi, because he also used that name along with Humphrey Humbert, Bob Collins, Hank Milestone, Humphrey Milestone and Humphrey Logan.
A scientist at a Florida university create a rage virus while performing experiments intended to restore dead brain tissue. And then when two college journalists breaks into the campus lab, one gets bitten by an infected babboon and spreads the virus to a gang of rapists dressed like the Cobra Kai on Halloween and a co-ed abortion lover named Debbie (Sarah Bruxton from Nightmare Beach)who all start killing other people on a smaller level as the virus in Lenzi’s Nightmare City.
Man, this movie has it all. There’s Bo Svenson as a scientist! Some of the grossest effects you’ll see in a movie as people drip pus everywhere! A Halloween party with Darth Vader! An Alf doll! Bartles and James wine coolers! An Avoid the Noid poster! Man, this is the most 1988 movie there’s ever been and I just can’t get enough of Italian filmmakers needing to prove it to you that their movie comes from America so badly that it seems like it had to come from another planet.
The music in this really takes it to another level. And yes, the song “Say the Word” also shows up in…you guessed it, Nightmare Beach. Man, they should have just called this one Nightmare Fraternity.
Yes, you may notice that the fourth Curse move was made two years after the third. We can blame that on the fact that it was the last officially completed film by Empire Pictures before the company was seized for failure to pay on loans.
This delayed the movie by five years and TriStar Home Video released it direct-to-video as Curse IV: The Ultimate Sacrifice with no connection to The Curse, The Curse II: The Bite or The Curse III: Blood Sacrifice.
It’s directed and written by David Schmoeller, whose Tourist Trap and Puppet Master are both great movies.
Teacher Elizabeth Magrino arrives at the Abbey of San Pietro en Valle to see the abbey’s first Prior had his vision healed within the catacombs thanks to the Miracle of the Celestial Light. There’s also the issue of a demon that had been trapped in the monastery that has now possessed an albino leper, which is really a sentence that you should go back and read again.
Making this movie work is a solid Italian crew, including cinematography by Sergio Salvati (The Beyond, The House by the Cemetery), a score by Pino Donaggio and production design by Giovanni Natalucci (Once Upon a Time in America, The Stendhal Syndrome). There’s one scene worth watching this movie for, as a possessed statue of Jesus remembers how amazing The Eerie Midnight Horror Show was and gets down off the cross and kills a monk.
Gary Sherman made Death Line, Dead & Buried, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Vice Squad and Lisa, so the guy knows how to make down and dirty horror and action, right? Despite this being the third film in the series, it’s a big budget movie for Sherman, but only Heather O’Rourke and Zelda Rubinstein from the original film and sequel came back.
Now, Carol Anne Freeling (O’Rourke) is in a Chicago high rise and being watched over by Bruce and Pat Gardener (the dream team of Tom Skerritt and Nancy Allen). Bruce thinks they just want to get rid of their problem daughter while she’s told that she’ll be attending a school for gifted kids.
One of the doctors in that school thinks that Carol Anne is insane and not touched by evil, so he keeps making her bring up the events of the last film and despite her parents efforts of sending her far away to confuse the horrifying Rev. Henry Kane (no longer Julian Beck, but now Nathan David with Corey Burton doing the voice), all that talking about him brings him right back to her. Not even psychic Tangina Barrons (Rubinstein) can save her, as he uses dopplegangers of Carol Anne to murder her and Bruce’s daughter Donna (Lara Flynn Boyle) to kill the doctor.
Of course, everyone must battle in the land beyond death and Pat has to prove that she can be Carol Anne’s mother. Sure, the end sets up a fourth movie, but it never happened.
That may be because real life found a way in.
At the time this movie started production, O’Rourke had been ill with flu-like symptoms and subsequently underwent medical treatment as the movie was filming. The theory was that she contracted giardiasis from well water at her family’s home and given the diagnosis of Crohn’s disease. She was prescribed cortisone injections to treat the disease and those injections resulted in facial swelling of the cheeks, which you can see in some scenes.
After O’Rourke completed filming, she returned home to California with her illness in remission. A few months later, she became sick again, her condition rapidly deteriorated and she died a month later as the movie was in post-production.
O’Rourke’s cause of death was ruled congenital stenosis of the intestine complicated by septic shock. It was a shocking tragedy that left an unfinished film that no one was sure how to release.
Meanwhile, Sherman still wanted to reshoot the end of the film and his complicated effects were all done in camera.
The movie was released with little to no marketing, as MGM didn’t want to exploit the death of the young actress. Skerritt and Allen were discouraged from giving interviews about the film to avoid questions.
It’s not great, but the effects are worth watching. The end — where Kane is obviously not defeated — is pretty cool. Too bad no one has done anything with him. Maybe he should go to Amityville.
It took eight years for a sequel to Caddyshack to get made, perhaps the greatest “hijinks ensue” movie ever made. I say that phrase because it’s such a simple concept: a quick statement like “A day in the life of a golf course…and hijinks ensue.”
The beauty of the original film is that despite the out there characters like Chevy Chase’s Ty Webb and Rodney Dangerfield’s Al Czervik, the story is really about the struggles of Danny Noonan (Michael O’Keefe), a working-class kid forced to follow the whims of the incredibly rich in the hopes that he can work toward a better life. It also comes from actual life, as writer Brian Doyle-Murray, his brothers Bill and John, too — was a caddie at Indian Hill Club in Winnetka, Illinois. His brothers Bill and John Murray, and director Harold Ramis had all been in Danny’s caddy shoes at one point. Most of the people in the movie were all based on actual members of the clubs that they had worked at.
Ramis told the A.V. Club that he went in with the right intentions: “They said, “Hey, we’ve got a great idea: The Shack is Back! And I said, “No, I don’t think so.” But they said that Rodney really wanted to do it, and we could build it around Rodney. Rodney said, “Come on, do it.” Then the classic argument came up which says that if you don’t do it, someone will, and it will be really bad. So I worked on a script with my partner Peter Torokvei, consulting with Rodney all the time. Then Rodney got into a fight with the studio and backed out. We had some success with Back to School, which I produced and wrote, and we were working with the same director, Alan Metter. When Rodney pulled out, I pulled out, and then they fired Alan and got someone else. I got a call from [co-producer] Jon Peters saying, “Come with us to New York; we’re going to see Jackie Mason!” I said, “Ooh, don’t do this. Why don’t we let it die?” And he said, “No, it’ll be great.” But I didn’t go, and they got other writers to finish it. I tried to take my name off that one, but they said if I took my name off, it would come out in the trades and I would hurt the film.”
This moment of wondering why this movie is being made and feeling is that it’s the wrong idea? That will come up throughout the discussion of this movie.
So instead of Rodney, we get Jackie Mason. Sure, they’re both older Jewish comedians who married much younger women late in their lives, but that’s about all they have in common. Rodney’s character was an everyman who seemed to be using the audience as his therapist, bemoaning the way he was treated with lines like “I know I’m ugly. I said to a bartender, “Make me a zombie.’ He told me that God beat him to it.” To me, Mason always felt like he was lecturing the audience, somewhat above it*.
Dan Aykroyd is one of my favorite actors, but he’s basically coming on to be Bill Murray. And while Jonathan Silverman and Michael O’Keefe are somewhat interchangeable, there’s a large divide between Robert Stack and Ted Knight. And that’s no slight to any of these actors, but when you’re placed in the same exact role as a movie that is beloved, you’re going to get compared. After all, Ted Knight is my favorite villain in any movie. He’s perfect in his role. And while I love Robert Stack, I can only see him in heroic roles or parts that make fun of his heroic nature.
I mean, I love Randy Quaid, but his role was written for Sam Kinison, who would have destroyed audiences with that part.
To be fair, Dangerfield was to be in this, but a month before production, he bailed, realizing that it wouldn’t work. He kept adding to his contract, demanding final cut and royalties and getting everything he wanted, except to be released from the film. This all ended up with him facing a $10 million dollar lawsuit.
But there still needed to be a movie.
As for director Allan Arkush, he told Sports Illustrated “I should have never made this movie! What was I thinking?” He told us — in an interview we were honored to get to conduct — “You should never make a movie for the wrong reasons. You should only make movies about something where you know no one else can make it better than you.”
So what’s it all about, you may ask.
Kate Hartounian (Jessica Lundy, who was in Bright Lights, Big City and Vampire’s Kiss the same year this was released), the daughter of real estate developer and working man Jack (Mason), seeks to improve her social status by following the advice of her friend Miffy Young (Chynna Phillips) and asks her dad to join the Bushwood Country Club.
Of course, seeing as how her dad builds housing that normal people can afford, he doesn’t fit in with club members like Chandler Young (Stack), his wife Cynthia (Dina Merrill, Operation Petticoat) and Mr. Jamison (an always welcome Paul Bartel).
Sure, hijinks ensue, but it’s hard to get behind the blustering Mason, who strangely attracts Diane Cannon, making this into something of a science fiction movie. The gopher can now talk (someone get Frank Welker in the booth stat!) and Chevy Chase shows up for all of five minutes, most of which consists of him being a sexist boor to scare off multiple women in a scene that may have seemed funny in 1988 but seems beyond gross in 2021 (I know, I know — let’s not place our modern values on movies from the past; I’m also the guy who brings you all sorts of aberrant Italian and Spanish gut-churning filth, right?!? But maybe I just agree with the “medium talent” assessment of Chase).
The hardest thing to deal with in this movie that it’s made by incredibly talented people placed into a thankless struggle to make something halfway decent. I mean, Harold Ramis and PJ Torokvei (who wrote Armed and Dangerous, Back to School, WKRP in Cincinnati and Real Genius) wrote the script with rewrites by Jeffrey Price and Peter Seaman, who wrote Who Framed Roger Rabbit together**.
The thing that really sticks out to me is that Caddyshack works whether or not you play golf, but if you love the game, you can see the nuances and enjoyment of the sport within the movie. In the sequel, golf just seems to be something in the background, other than the miniature golf course finale that closes the movie.
I guess you should add the phrase, “Don’t remake Caddyshack” to other important lessons like “Never fight a land war in Asia” and “Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line.”
In our aforementioned chat with the director, this movie was summed up quite simply:
B&S: So why Caddyshack II?
ALLAN: Yes, exactly. Why Caddyshack II? There are no more questions to be answered.
*Indeed, Arkush said –after seeing Mason perform two nights in a row — “I started to get a very different impression of him. The thing that occurred to me was that he didn’t connect with the audience in any sort of personal way. That’s not necessarily a good thing for someone who’s supposed to be your lead. At least when Rodney says, “I get no respect,” there’s an empathy that he evokes from the audience.”
**To be fair, they also wrote Wild Wild West and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, so perhaps…
This movie has such a challenge to overcome because Return of the Living Dead is just so good. Despite being even sillier than that movie, at least it tries.
As the zombie outbreak in Louisville continues, a military truck transporting barrels of Trioxin loses one in a river. Yes, this is how the end will arrive. It will also arrive at the hands of teen bullies, who are way more frightening than zombies.
Thom Mathews and James Karen — as Ed Mathews and Joey Hazel — are pretty much the same characters as they were in the last movie. Joey even says, “I feel like we’ve been here before. You… me…them!” as he looks at us, the audience. Jonathan Terry also was back as Colonel Glover.
This movie also has an interesting soundtrack, which is another similarity with the first one. There’s a diverse mix here with everything from Julian Cope, Anthrax and Mantronix to Leatherwolf and Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction.
But yeah. It’s never going to be as good as the first movie for so many reasons and the only one you need is Linnea Quigley.
Dean Koontz — whose own website proclaims him as the “International Bestselling Master of Suspense” — has sold over 450 million copies of his books, but it always seems like he’s a little behind Stephen King. I mean, that’s not a bad thing, as King was just a monolith when it came to selling books. But Koontz was successful as well. as in the VHS rental wild late 80s and 90s, so many of his books became movies. Watchers, which is very, very loosely based on one of his books, has three sequels alone.
Other Koontz film adaptions include Demon Seed, The Passengers (based on his noel Shattered), Whispers, Servants of Twilight, Hideaway, Intensity, Mr. Murder, Phantoms, Sole Survivor, Frankenstein, Odd Thomas and Black River.
Koontz’s golden retriever Trixie was often on his book jackets and even wrote two books, Life Is Good: Lessons in Joyful Living and Christmas Is Good. She was a service dog that had been trained by Canine Companions for Independence (CCI), a charitable organization that provides service dogs for people with disabilities, an organization that Koontz discovered while writing his book Midnight. Over the years, he helped the group raise $2.5 million in funds, so Trixie was their gift to him. So you can see why having a supercanine golden retriever in a story made sense to him — which is what Watchers is all about.
Watchers (1988): It’s a rivalry as old as time: a golden retriever with special abilities battling the mutated monster known as the OXCOM (Outside Experimental Combat Mammal).
The dog soon makes friends with Travis Cornell (Corey Haim) and his girlfriend Tracey (Lala Sloatman, who was dating Haim; she’s also the niece of Frank Zappa and is in Amityville: A New Generation). Of course, the government wants the dog back, so they send NSO agent Johnson (Michael Ironside).
This movie kills everyone it comes across, with either OXCOM or Johnson basically wiping out a small town, whether to kill or to keep the murders secret.
Amazingly, this was originally written by Paul Haggis, who would go on to write Million Dollar Baby, Crash and yes, create Walker Texas Ranger.
Watchers II (1990): Hey, I think that Marc Singer — he’s the Beastmaster — and Tracy Scoggins — from Dynasty and The Colbys — are fine replacements in this film that finds OXCOM and a golden retriever still battling one another.
Singer is a Marine gone AWOL. Scoggins is an animal psychologist from the top secret laboratory and the OXCOM still is a goofy rubber suit. And sure, this may be the same movie we just watched, but when has a sequel being the same as the first movie ever stopped us?
Screenwriters John Brancato and Michael Ferris used the name Henry Dominic — the same alter ego they’d use for Bloodfist II, Flight of the Black Angel, The Unborn, Severed Tiesand Mindwarp — as neither were members of the Writer’s Guild of America. Brancato and Ferris would go on to write The Game, as well as The Net.
Thierry Notz also directed The Terror Within which makes a lot of sense once you see this movie.
Watchers 3 (1994): Oh yes, this third one was shot in Peru, executive produced by Roger Corman and has one of my favorites, Wings Hauser, in the middle of the never-ending war between mutant and mongrel. Yes, this time it’s the deformed Outsider, which lives only to kill, battling Einstein, a golden retriever with an IQ of 175.
To stop the monster, Hauser is put in charge of a squad of military men and criminals. Now if you’re thinking, “Would Roger Corman rip off Predator?” let me just say that yes, he would. He did. And he would do it again.
Written by the same man who penned Carnosaur 2, let me tell you, I will regret nothing on my deathbed except probably the time I spent watching this movie. Eh, who am I kidding? I’d watch it again if you asked with any nicety in your tone.
Watcher Reborn (1998): You know what you never realize as a kid? As bad of a director as George Lucas can be, he’s one of the few people able to reign in the hammy tendencies of Mark Hamill, who plays a detective in this one who has just lost his wife and son to a fire that was probably caused by a mutant because that’s how it goes.
Lisa Wilcox, Alice from A Nightmare On Elm Street 4and 5, plays the scientist who introduces him to a golden retriever, this time named Alex and being not as smart as he was the last time, only having an IQ of 140. This one also has a pit bull and the man who ruined Night Gallery in syndication, Gary Collins, so you know that my heart is on the side of the animals and not the humans. I’m also on the side of all murderous mutants, because as Emily Dickinson wrote, “The heart wants what it wants, or else it does not care,” and we’ve gone about proving this inscrutable wisdom true ever since.”
Low Rawls — yes, the man who sang “You’ll Never Find Another Love like Mine” — has a cameo as a coroner, so if you ever get asked, “What do Lucio Fulci and Lou Rawls have in common?” and a gun is at your temple, I have provided you with the knowledge that will save your life.
Should you watch the Watchers movies? Look, I don’t want to tell you what to do with your life. I mean, you could also ask, “Should you watch a hundred Jess Franco movies in one month?” The answer is always going to be yes for me as I try and get the highest of movie highs, no matter how bad the strain seems to be.
It felt like at the end of the 80s everyone wanted to make the next great monster. Stan Winston made more monsters than anyone else, so when he got the chance to direct his first film, the monster had better be great.
Sure, Pumpkinhead looks kind of like the xenomorphs from Alien, but it also has a throwback to the energy and foggy menace of classic horror. That may be because writers Mark Patrick Carducci (Neon Maniacs, Buried Alive) and Garry Gerani looked to the movies of Mario Bava for inspiration.
It’s also the only monster movie that I know that comes from a poem. Yes, Ed Justin wrote this poem, Pumpkinhead, which inspired the movie*:
“Keep away from Pumpkinhead,
Unless you’re tired of living,
His enemies are mostly dead,
He’s mean and unforgiving,
Laugh at him and you’re undone,
But in some dreadful fashion,
Vengeance, he considers fun,
And plans it with a passion,
Time will not erase or blot,
A plot that he has brewing,
It’s when you think that he’s forgot,
He’ll conjure your undoing,
Bolted doors and windows barred,
Guard dogs prowling in the yard,
Won’t protect you in your bed,
Nothing will, from Pumpkinhead!”
Ed Harley (Lance Henriksen) has already lost his wife, so when a bunch of teenagers accidentally kill his son, he gives gold to a witch to get the revenge the law won’t give him. That revenge is the gigantic Pumpkinhead, which pretty much kills everyone and anyone.
I really loved this when it came out on video, as it really has a dark story to go with the effects and so few horror movies at the time mixed the supernatural with the rural. It just works so well and Winston has a great eye for a first-time filmmaker.
You know who stars in this and you may recognize him? That’d be Mushroom, the dog who plays Ed’s dig Gypsy. He also played Barney in Gremlins. And yes, that’s Mayim Bialik two years before she was Blossom.
Here’s the silliest trivia I have about this movie: it’s cinematographer, Bojan Bazelli, directed Mariah Carey’s “Vision of Love” video.
Most of the cast and crew of Hellraiser returned to make this movie and you know, despite the reduced budget, the dark tone of this movie and continuation of the themes from the original makes this one of the better horror sequels.
Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Laurence, returning from the first movie) is admitted to a psychiatric hospital where Doctor Channard and his assistant Kyle MacRae listen to her story. She begs them to destroy the bloody mattress her stepmother Julia Cotton (Clare Higgins) died on but Channard ends up being a man who has been obsessed with the Lament Configuration. After a patient slices himself open upon that cursed object, Julia comes back to our reality.
Channard and Julia have been luring mentally disturbed men to his home so that Julia can feed off of them. Meanwhile, Kirsty meets Tiffany, a girl skilled at solving puzzles who is forced by the doctor and his demented mistress to open the gates of Hell with the infernal box at the heart of this story.
Within the dimension of Leviathan, the humans are more duplicitous than the demonic Cenobites that carry out the orders of their master.
Barker had plans to show how each of the Cenobites had once been human and how their own vices lead to their becoming angels to some, demons to others. You’d think that with the success of the first film they could have had a little more money here.
Another intriguing notion is that Julia was originally supposed to rise from the mattress at the end of the movie as the queen of hell and be the recurring character. As the first movie gradually became a success, Pinhead ended up becoming the favorite.
Back in the video rental days, I may have brought this home more than twenty times. I was obsessed by the look of Leviathan’s dimension and the strange sound that it makes — Morse code for God — blew my teenage mind. It still holds up today, despite a litany of lesser sequels (which trust me, we’re getting to).
Conan the Barbarian and its success just meant that Italians could go back to making the peplum films they made for more than a decade in the 50s. The locations were there, the props were easy and all it took was the germ of an idea to send tons of Italian filmmakers out and about to make their own sword and sorcery movies, like Franco Prosperi’s Gunan, King of the Barbarians and Throne of Fire, Umberto Lenzi’s Ironmaster and Michele Massimo Tarantini’s Sword of the Barbarians.
For my money, no one made a better barbarian movie on a smaller budget than Joe D’Amato with his Ator films. Made from 1982 to 1990, three of these four films were filmed by D’Amato under his David Hills name. The other one was directed by Alfonso Brescia and D’Amato didn’t like it! As for actors, the first three feature Miles O’Keeffe and the fourth has Eric Allan Kramer as his son.
Instead of just being a big dumb lunk like Conan is in the movies — we can discuss Conan being a thief in the books and comics any time you’d like — Ator is also an alchemist, scholar, swordmaster and even a magician who can materialize objects out of nowhere.
We’ve pulled together our past reviews of Ator’s films, added some content and put them all in one place to introduce you to these astounding movies and hopefully get you watching them.
Ator the Fighting Eagle (1982): Once, Ator was just a baby, born with the birthmark that prophesied that he’d grow up to destroy the Spider Cult, whose leader Dakar (a pro wrestler who appeared in Titanes en el Ring against Martín Karadagian) tries to kill before he even gets out of his chainmail diapers.
Luckily, Ator is saved and grows up big, strong and weirdly in love with his sister, Sunya. It turns out that luckily, he’s adopted, so this is only morally and not biologically upsetting. His father allows them to be married, but the Spider Cult attacks the village and takes her, along with several other women.
Ator trains with Griba, the warrior who saved him as a child (he’s played by Edmund Purdom, the dean from Pieces!). What follows are pure shenanigans — Ator is kidnapped by Amazons, almost sleeps with a witch, undertakes a quest to find a shield and meets up with Roon (Sabrina Siani, Ocron from Fulci’s batshit barbarian opus Conquest), a sexy blonde thief who is in love with him.
Oh yeah! Laura Gemser, Black Emanuelle herself, shows up here too. It is a Joe D’Amato movie after all.
Ator succeeds in defeating Dakkar, only to learn that the only reason that Griba mentored him was to use him to destroy his enemy. That said, Ator defeats him too, leaving him to be eaten by the Lovecraftian-named Ancient One, a monstrous spider. But hey, Ator isn’t done yet. He kills that beast too!
Finally, learning that Roon has died, Ator and Sunya go back to their village, ready to make their incestual union a reality. Or maybe not, as she doesn’t show up in the three sequels.
Ator is played by Miles O’Keefe, who started his Hollywood career in the Bo Derek vehicle Tarzan the Ape Man, a movie that Richard Harris would nearly fist fight people over if they dared to bring it up. He’s in all but the last of these films and while D’Amato praised his physique and attitude, he felt that his fighting and acting skills left something to be desired.
Ator the Fighting Eagle pretty much flies by. It does what it’s supposed to do — present magic, boobs, sorcery and swordfights — albeit in a PG-rated film. It’s anything except boring. And it was written by Michele Soavi (Stagefright, The Church, The Sect, Cemetery Man)!
You can watch it on Tubi in either the original or RiffTrax version.
Ator 2 – L’invincibile Orion (1984): Joe D’Amato wanted to make a prehistoric movie like Quest for Fire called Adamo ed Eva that read a lot like 1983’s Adam and Eve vs. The Cannibals. However, once he called in Miles O’Keefe to be in the movie, the actor said that he couldn’t be in the film due to moral and religious reasons. One wonders why he was able to work with Joe D’Amato, a guy who made some of the scummiest films around.
Akronos has found the Geometric Nucleus and is keeping its secret safe when Zor (Ariel from Jubilee) and his men attack the castle. The old king begs his daughter Mila (Lisa Foster, who starred in the Cinemax classic Fanny Hill and later became a special effects artist and video game developer) to find his student Ator (O’Keefe).
Mila gets shot with an arrow pretty much right away, but Ator knows how to use palm leaves and dry ice to heal any wound, a scene which nearly made me fall of my couch in fits of giggles. Soon, she joins Ator and Thong as they battle their way back to the castle, dealing with cannibals and snake gods.
Somehow, Ator also knows how to make a modern hang glider and bombs, which he uses to destroy Zor’s army. After they battle, Ator even wants Zor to live, because he’s a progressive barbarian hero, but the bad guy tries to kill him. Luckily, Thong takes him out.
After all that, Akronos gives the Geometric Nucleus to Ator, who also pulls that old chestnut out that his life is too dangerous to share with her. He takes the Nucleus to a distant land and sets off a nuke.
Yes, I just wrote that. Because I just watched that.
If you want to see this with riffing, it’s called Cave Dwellers in its Mystery Science Theater 3000 form. But man, a movie like this doesn’t really even need people talking over it. It was shot with no script in order to compete with Conan the Destroyer. How awesome is that?
You can get this from Revok or watch Cave Dwellers on Tubi.
Iron Warrior (1988):
I always worry and think, “What is left? Have I truly exhausted the bounds of cinema? Have I seen all there is that is left to see? Will nothing ever really surprise and delight me ever again?” Then I watched Iron Warrior and holy shit you guys — this movie is mindblowing.
Alfonso Brescia made a bunch of Star Trek-inspired Star Wars ripoffs in the late 70’s, like Cosmos: War Of the Planets, Battle Of the Stars, War Of the Robots and Star Odyssey. Before that, he was known for working in the peplum genre with entries such as The Magnificent Gladiator and The Conquest of Atlantis. And some maniacs out there may know him from his Star Wars clone cover version of Walerian Borowczyk’s The Beast — complete with the same actress, Sirpa Lane — called The Beast in Space.
Today, though, we’re here to discuss Brescia taking over the reins of Ator from Joe D’Amato after Ator the Fighting Eagle and Ator 2: The Blade Master. I expected another muddy cave dwelling movie livened up only by nukes and hang gliders. What I received was a movie where a frustrated artist was struggling to break free.
This movie goes back to the beginning of Ator’s life, where we discover that his twin brother was taken at a young age. Now, our hero travels to Dragor (really the Isle of Malta) to do battle with a sorceress named Phaedra (Elisabeth Kazaand, who was in the aforementioned The Beast) her unstoppable henchman, the silver skulled, red bandana wearing Trogar (Franco Daddi, who was the stunt coordinator for both Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and The Curse), who is the Iron Master of the Sword.
Princess Janna (Savina Gersak, who was in War Bus Commando) and Ator (the returning Miles O’Keefe) join forces and man, Janna’s makeup and hair is insane. She has what I can only describe as a ponytail mohawk and has makeup that wouldn’t be out of place on the Jem and the Holograms cartoon.
Imagine, if you will, a low budget sword and sorcery film that has MTV style editing, as well as gusts of wind, constant dolly shots and nausea-inducing zooms. It’s less a narrative film as it is a collection of images, sword fights and just plain weirdness. Like Deeva (Iris Peynado, who you may remember as Vinya, the girl who hooks up with Fred Williamson in Warriors of the Wasteland) saying that she created both Ator and Trogar to be tools of justice? This movie completely ignores the two that came before — and the one that follows it — and I am completely alright with all of it!
Supposedly, D’Amato hated this movie. Lots of people hate on it online, too. Well, guess what? They’re wrong. This is everything that I love about movies and proved to me that there is still some cinematic magic left in the world to find.
How about this for strange trivia? When they made the Conan the Adventurer series in 1997, Ator’s sword was repainted and used as the Sword of Atlantis!
Quest for the Mighty Sword (1990): If there’s a 12 step group for people who watch too many Joe D’Amato movies, well I should be the counselor, helping talk people off the ledge after they think they need to watch Erotic Nights of the Living Deador Eleven Days, Eleven Nights or…hell, I can’t do it. For all people heap scorn on the movies of the man born Aristide Massaccesi, I find myself falling in love more and more with each movie.
D’Amato hated what Brescia did with his creation, so he starts this one off by killing Ator and introducing us to his son. Obviously, Miles O’Keefe isn’t back.
This one has nearly as many titles as Aristide had names: Ator III: The Hobgoblin, Hobgoblin, Quest for the Mighty Sword and Troll 3.
That’s because the costumes from Troll 2 — created by Laura Gemser, who is in this as an evil princess — got recycled and reused in this movie. D’Amato proves that he’s a genius by having whoever is inside those costumes speak.
Let me see if I can summarize this thing. Ator gets killed by the gods because he doesn’t want to give up his magic sword, which he uses to challenge criminals to battles to the death. The only goddess who speaks for him, Dehamira (Margaret Lenzey), is imprisoned inside a ring of fire until a man can save her.
That takes eighteen years, because Ator the son’s mother gave the sorcerer Grindl (the dude wearing the troll costume) her son to raise and the sword to hide. She then asked him for a suicide drink, but he gave her some Spanish Fly and got to gnome her Biblically in the back of his cave before releasing her to be a prostitute and get abused until her son eventually comes and saves her because this is a Joe D’Amato movie and women are there to be rescued, destroy men and be destroyed by men.
This movie is filled with crowd-pleasing moments and seeing as how I watched it by myself, I loved it. Ator (Eric Allan Kramer, Thor in the TV movie The Incredible Hulk Returns and Little John in Robin Hood: Men In Tights) looks like Giant Jeff Daniels and his fighting skills are, at best, clumsy. But he battles a siamese twin robot that shoots sparks, a goopy fire breathing lizard man who he slices to pieces and oh yeah, totally murks that troll/gnome who turned out his mom.
This is the kind of movie where Donald O’Brien and Laura Gemser play brother and sister and nobody says, “How?” You’ll be too busy saying, “Is that Marisa Mell?” and “I can’t believe D’Amato stole the cantina scene!” and “What the hell is going on with this synth soundtrack?”
Here’s even more confusion: D’Amato’s The Crawlers was also released as Troll 3. Then again, it was also called Creepers (it has nothing to Phenomena) and Contamination .7, yet has no connection with Contamination.
Only Joe D’Amato could make two sequels to a movie that has nothing to do with the movie that inspired it and raise the stakes by having nothing to do with the original film or the sequel times two. You can watch this on YouTube.
While there have never been any official Ator toys, check out the amazing custom figures that Underworld Muscle has made:
Thanks for being part of all things Ator. Which of the movies is your favorite?
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